Pre-show notes:
– As a fun note, this month is the fourth anniversary of the Best and Worst of Raw column. I started writing it back at AOL FanHouse in November of 2010, and it’s been going strong ever since. You know, not counting that gap between when the Sporting News took over FanHouse and fired everybody and the random Tuesday at With Leather when I didn’t have a Kate Upton gallery to share and tried to get away with a page full of wrestling jokes. Thanks for giving me the most fun job in the world.
– With Spandex is on Twitter, so follow it. Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter.
– Shares, likes, comments and other social media things are appreciated. I’d like to hit a 5th anniversary, so help me out here.
Please click through for the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for November 3, 2014.
Best: Mr. McMahon Is Here, He’s Insane, He’s Making Match Stipulations On The Fly And I’m Pretty Sure He’s Wearing Somebody’s Skin As A Suit
Hey, everybody. An old man’s talking!
Raw begins with a power-walking, gently hopping Vince McMahon accompanying The Authority to ringside and making a bunch of random anti-Authority stipulations for Survivor Series. Because Mr. McMahon’s only role on the show now is to suddenly appear and say “NOW YOU’RE IN CHARGE,” he declares that should The Authority lose their match with John Cena at the upcoming free-per-view they will no longer be “The Authority.” I don’t think WWE loves anything as much as having characters with equal power fluctuate their rankings and hire and fire each other on a whim. The Authority should lose at Survivor Series, be fired by Mr. McMahon and have Vickie Guerrero rehire them the next night on Raw.
The good news of course is that Vinny Mac was on the show. No matter what he’s doing, his presence makes things feel more important. In addition to being one of the best wrestling characters ever, he’s one of the few remaining with legit gravitas. No matter how many things he’s pulled out of a Stunt JR’s rectum, no matter how many giant asses he’s had his face forced into, Vince McMahon’s increasingly rooster-like face on TV means something’s about to happen. For better or worse, that’s something WWE desperately needs.
Best: Stop Supporting My Theories!
Two things I loved about the opening:
1. McMahon/Shield continuity. If you’ll remember, Vince said The Shield had ruthless aggression and reminded him of himself. Dean Ambrose shook his hand and made goofy faces. On Raw, Vince is leaving the ring and Dean Ambrose shows up. They’re happy to see each other, and Ambrose wanders into the ring to wrestle his match without incident. How great would it be if Vince was still a Shield mark, and was booking against The Authority to punish Seth Rollins for f*cking up his favorite thing?
2. WWE giving me too much evidence to support my crackpot conspiracy theories.
If you’re a regular reader of the column, you’ll know that one of my favorite headcanon storylines is John Cena being the secret, evil villain behind everything bad happening in WWE. He gets whatever he wants. When he’s the champion, everything revolves around him. When he isn’t, everything revolves around him. Ask CM Punk who is more important, John Cena or the WWE Champion. Cena gets an endless string of opportunities, always finds a way to “overcome the odds” whether it’s 1-on-1 or 7-on-1, and Vince McMahon gets WEIRD around him. Watch almost any Vince/Cena interaction. If any other wrestler (besides maybe a post-feud Stone Cold Steve Austin) gets in Vince’s face, he gets hot and starts screaming at them. If Cena gets in his face, he starts gulping and saying “yes sir.” He’s had a Single White Female thing happening with Cena for years. Why do you think Vince became “urban” when he won the ECW Championship?
Here, you’ve got Vince showing up out of nowhere to announce a super, super pro-John Cena stipulation for Survivor Series. If Cena’s team wins, the entire hierarchy of power at the top of WWE is restructured. If Cena’s team loses? Nothing. He loses the match and feuds with them again in December. Vince has given an already unstoppable, nigh-invulnerable 15-time World Champion a chance to change the company on a whim, a month after he was given a #1 contendership as a reward for losing a match. Something’s up, and all signs point to Cena being the higher power.
He’s Gríma Wormtongue, and Vince is King Théoden of Rohan. Why do you think he looks so old?
Best: At Least He Isn’t Getting Tapped In The Head With A Microphone Until He Runs Away
“Watching Cesaro lose for the 500th time is boring!” — John Cena and Randy Orton
The good news about the suspiciously-timed Cesaro losing streak is that it still involves Cesaro being on shows and wrestling matches, and that’s hard to complain about. The 2-out-of-3 falls match against Dolph Ziggler at Hell in a Cell ended in a kinda humiliating two straight falls, but it was awesome. The Trick Or Street Fight from Smackdown was full of dumb Chikara fun like taking a suplex onto a bed of hollowed-out pumpkins and selling them like thumbtacks. The Ambrose/Cesaro match from Raw was more of the same, but featured some cool little stuff like Ambrose countering a backslide attempt with Dirty Deeds in a perfect “whoops, I’m suddenly in position to hit my finisher, might as well end the match” moment. Aside from last week’s microphonic emasculation, a “depushed” or “buried” Cesaro (or whatever) is still “Cesaro on my television,” and I’m okay with that.
I would like to see him recover quickly and get involved as one of the main players in a purposeful feud that wasn’t cobbled together two weeks before a pay-per-view. Damien Sandow was once in this Sandow spot of only showing up to get kicked in the butt and bonked in the head with Christmas props, and while yeah, we still love the hell out of Damien Sandow, he’s not exactly being positioned as a main-event guy. Sandow’s great, but Cesaro’s that special kind of great Daniel Bryan is, which makes watching him aimlessly lose all the time so frustrating.
Best/Worst: A Night Of Accidental Blood
Cesaro gets his head busted open, and Randy Orton spends the last minute of the show with a big Psycho shower drain blood stream sliding down his face. It’s nice to feel like some of these physical confrontations have, you know, physical consequences, but be careful! Not only for your personal health, but because you’re currently being sued for $5 million for bleeding on people. Besides, the last thing we want is for Jerry Lawler to remember all his ebola jokes from 1994 and cause a panic.
Best: The Miz Turns Face In His Own Mind
Speaking of Sandow, I love how close he is to turning Miz face. Listen to the boos when Jey Uso superkicks him.
It’s probably impossible to get a WWE crowd to cheer The Miz for any real reasons in 2014, but you could at least position him on the better side of bad by keeping him in a feud with The Usos. Is there a team more primed for a heel turn than The Usos? They’re hard to like. They’re … is “phony” the right word? It’s hard to explain. They’re obnoxious every time they talk because they seem like they’re reading a “funny thing” someone wrote for them before the show. “USO CRAZY,” am I right? “Bros before WEIRDOS!” They don’t really have a personality beyond that, so aside from some leg-slappy superkicks and low-level “slightly too heavyset to be jumping” jumping, they’ve got nothing in the tank. It’s just two smiling guys in clown-colored clothes patting you on the shoulder and saying they love you. The Usos should’ve turned instead of the Goldust and Stardust. Maybe that’s why the only people the Dusts have been heelish have been the Usos? Maybe they’re just ahead of the game.
The backstage interview with Miz and Sandow is great, where he tries to get the WWE Universe in on his mirror game as a FUN THING WE CAN ALL DO. He stays pandering for about half a minute before passive-aggressively burning Eden. Miz believing he’s turned over some new leaf by admitting that he’s pals with his stunt double is great, and gets him that “I have a FRIEND” heat Damien Sandow’s the master of.
Best: Rusev Is Just Hanging Out Backstage Shirtless, Holding A Flag, Wearing High-Waisted Panties With His Name On Them And Holding A Russian Flag While He Watches TV
Same.
Worst: No Idea Why They Did This Right Now
Did we seriously just build to a Rusev/Sheamus post-show match and title change by having Sheamus lose via technicality and be a sore loser to a guy who spends 80% of his time in developmental? Are we throwing Sheamus under the bus, or is it more important for Cena to have John Cena Of Europe on his Survivor Series team?
A Best, though, for Tyson Kidd winning a Raw match. Suck it, Sami Zayn, he’s using his time on the main roster EFFECTIVELY.
Best: Dolph Ziggler’s Stupid, Forgetful Babyface Nobility
As I write about way too much, I love The Authority for being the only characters on the show who remember things and have a rational point of view. They’re horrible people, sure, but maybe I’m a horrible person too, because I almost uniformly agree with them. Why SHOULD Dolph Ziggler join Team Cena? What does he get out of it? The Authority aren’t the ones holding Ziggler back. They aren’t keeping him out of a “spot.” That’s John Cena. Cena’s the one who calls himself “The Face That Runs the Place.” Cena’s the one who won’t stop yelling about how if the future wants to happen, it has to go through HIM. When Hall of Famers show up, they don’t tell young stars they have to go through Seth Rollins for validation, they say you have to prove yourself in every imaginable situation against John Cena.
All Ziggler has backing him up is the I AM NOW A GOOD GUY talking point. That’s it. There’s no actual kayfabe reason for him to be friends with Cena. Ignoring the whole “I called Cena’s girlfriend trash so she broke up with him, shoved him off a ladder and started f*cking me under Christmas trees” thing, the last direct on-screen interaction between them before last week’s handshake was Cena interrupting Ziggler’s New Year’s Eve toast and literally dumping shit on his face. Cena hated Ziggler so much he clandestinely rigged up a motorized trough over the ring and filled it with feces. To me, Cena asking Ziggler for help feels like, “this guy’s under my foot, let’s see if he does what I tell him.”
I like The Authority taking him seriously enough to try to woo him away from the team, and of course I love Ziggler turning them down because of BABYFACE NOBILITY. It’s so, so dumb. It’s Sting dumb. They’re giving you anything you want, and you throw it back in their face to play second fiddle to the man holding you down. Ziggler doesn’t want things handed to him! Keep in mind that this is the same Dolph Ziggler who hooked up with Vickie Guerrero to get a bunch of title shots and opportunities he didn’t deserve. Suddenly he’s above it. It’s the kind of thing people who want to cheer for him don’t care about, they just care about his decision RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.
Here are a list of things that make you a heel in WWE:
1. having friends
2. being in love
3. thinking
4. remembering things
5. telling the truth
Best: Besides, Who Cares, It Gave Us Rollins/Ziggler
While we’re on the topic of weird alignments, Seth Rollins is still right behind Rusev as the secret best babyface on the show.
Last week, a taped-up and hurt Rollins fought like a scrappy underdog against a daisy fresh John Cena. He was the heel in the match of course and had people on the outside trying to cheat for him, but it was still a big, fresh monster against a smaller, injured, high flying opponent. This week, Rollins wrestles the Intercontinental Champion and BEATS him, but loses via DQ when 8 Days Ago’s top heel slide in and attacks him. He’s then put into a SECOND match against ANOTHER fresh, overpowered super opponent. So Rollins is hurt and tired and fighting from underneath against a guy who is bigger and stronger than him, and he WINS. I know he’s the heel and I absolutely agree with that belief, but damn, they’re having him actually physically wrestle like the toughest babyface in the world.
To briefly discuss the match (like I’m probably supposed to be doing), the chemistry between Ziggler and Rollins is obvious. I liked the small things they worked in like Rollins going for THE KICK THAT WON DEL RIO A CHAMPIONSHIP MAGGLE. Even without the psychology, it’s a delight to watch the two most reckless bumpers in the company bounce around on their heads.
Best: Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Snakeman
The RKO from outta nowhere is awesome when it actually comes from out of nowhere. Usually that means a guy taking forever steadying himself on the apron for a springboard clothesline or Jumping Nothing while Orton slowly recovers, or it means someone has taken 80 seconds to climb the ropes and goes for a flying headbutt to a standing opponent. Here, Orton isn’t involved at all and then boop, he slides into the ring from off-camera and is RKO’ing folks before our brains can register his powder blue jammies.
I don’t like the “give me a match against a guy who just wrestled for 10 minutes TONIGHT” thing, but spazzy, out-of-control Orton is phenomenal. He’s such an interesting character. Triple H seems to think he can control him with tough love and forehead-to-forehead touching, but the guy has a legitimate kayfabe mental disease that can only be treated by grabbing someone’s head when they least expect it and falling to the ground. Mercury, Noble and the referee all selling Orton’s instant summoning by making Michelle Tanner surprised faces and holding out their arms is the best.
I really hope Orton shows up to Survivor Series to join Team Cena and Cena’s all, “nah man, we’re good, you’re Randy Orton. You’re going to have a hippy snake freakout and kick us in the head, too. He sucks, but I gave your spot to R-Truth. What happens if he turns on us? We get sarcastically danced on? I’m okay with that. I’m John Cena, all I have to do is stand on the apron looking excited and then throw shoulderblocks until everyone on the other team is dead. Where was I going with this? Oh, right, f*ck you forever.” And then Orton just droops his head and skulks off to join Team Usos.
Worst: Why Are So Many Guys Pulling Double Duty Tonight?
Was there a house show in Nova Scotia or something that pulled half the roster off the show? Why is Seth Rollins wrestling twice? If Sheamus is defending the United States Championship against Rusev on a Network-exclusive match after Raw, why do Sheamus and Rusev have matches against other people ON it? I know one of the big problems with WWE right now is that the roster’s like eight dudes deep, but hey, I’m fairly certain you could sneak Adrian Neville or Sami Zayn back onto Raw in place of Rusev/Zack Ryder and nobody’d complain.
Best/Worst: Titus O’Neil Mailing That Promo The Hell In Because He Knows He’s About To Get Squashed By Ryback
“welcome to raw. it’s spelt r-a-w-i-t-u-s. sigh. arra arra arra” – Titus O’Neil
Ryback’s return last week was great, and his post-show explanation for why he’s ignoring a year and a half of character growth is even better. What you shouldn’t be ignoring are the problems that made Ryback’s initial run a disaster in the first place.
When he debuted, Ryback was a hot act. He was crazy strong, a callback to the “get in the ring, destroy guys, bail before we get tired of you” character Goldberg proved could draw big money. He squashed a bunch of jobbers and it was fun. Then he … kept squashing jobbers. Months and months of squashing jobbers. Then he was INSTANTLY IN THE WORLD TITLE PICTURE, and without any rising action or crowd education on what The Ryback does in matches that aren’t 40 seconds long or less, he faltered. They had to find convoluted ways to explain why he’d lose, and by the next WrestleMania he was just a guy who couldn’t get the job done. A fired blank.
You’ve got Ryback on the show again and the crowd’s ready to cheer him, but you’re falling into the same trap. Last week, he squashed Bo Dallas. This week, he squashes Titus O’Neil. Next week he’ll probably squash Heath Slater. Then he’ll get jammed onto Team Cena at Survivor Series or positioned as a “favorite to win the Royal Rumble,” and you’ll be stuck trying to rationalize losses for a guy whose entire character is “doesn’t lose matches.” My advice would be to watch the Ryback face turn explanation video, play with it a little more, write some stories where he gets to react and respond to things like a living character — a cartoonish living character, he doesn’t have to be deep — and let a crowd that wants to love him figure out where he fits.
Best: Someone Spellchecked Ryback’s Singlet
Better late THEN never!
Best: The Acknowledgement That ‘Person Who Changes Alignment All The Time’ Is An Observable WWE Character Trait
We jump backstage to Renee Young, who is witness to Big Show explaining the Mark Henry heel turn and going full Darryl Worley by saying he “misses his friend.” Henry should’ve done a response where he yelled HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN, HOW IT FELT THAT DAY?
The best part of the interview is Show mentioning how he and Henry have been in WWE for 20 years, and that they’ve been loved and hated and everything in-between. It’s one of those rare instances of WWE acknowledging how dramatic character changes work into an active wrestler’s history, and establishing “guy who turns a lot” as a character type.
It’s comforting to know that there’s a spectrum between “good” and “evil” sometimes. It’s not a matter of Attitude Era gray areas, either, it’s just that some people aren’t born good or bad; they have change erratically, live in a moment of stimulus response and never truly learn from their mistakes. Alicia Fox isn’t “crazy,” her brain’s just wired to go with the flow, and in WWE “the flow” is irrational emotion caused by the slightest changes. That’s what wrestling fans do too, isn’t it?
Worst: The Erick Rowan Boner Follies Of 2014
Remember last November when Michael Strahan guest hosted Raw, and they got dangerously close to turning Erick Rowan into a comedy character? Remember how scared we were?
Well, it turns out November is when Rowan gets WACKY, because last night he showed up for no reason to paw at Renee’s hair and say “pretty.” Renee’s sell of it’s pretty hilarious, I’ll admit. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but this confirms that Rowan will be working a ladies man gimmick and pulling out a sheep sock from the crotch of his underpants to win matches within the calendar year. Or, you know, he’ll continue being Erick Rowan until next November, when he approaches Eden backstage, slowly lifts the sheep mask and asks WHAZZAAAAAAAAP??
Worst: A Very Slow Wig-Splitting
Look at the faces of the people in the front row.
As someone who loves Mark Henry and thinks Big Show’s one of the most underutilized performers in the company, Mark Henry vs. Big Show was a honking pile of f*cking garbage. Just terrible. My review for this would be lying facedown on my living room floor with my hands at my side for five minutes. It was the match equivalent of putting on your blinker to get a sparking space and watching a minivan do a 30-point turn trying to leave it.
Even Henry’s post-match attack on Show was weak. He gives him a World’s Strongest Slam onto the ring steps, but there’s maybe six inches between Show and the steps. Slamming him on the floor or the variety of larger, more readily-available metal surfaces could’ve worked. Mark Henry’s all, “I need a thing to slam Show on. This concrete floor? No. The metal ramp? The stage? All the dangerous and sharp electrical metal shit AROUND the stage? OFF the stage? I’VE GOT IT. I’LL SLAM HIM ONTO THE STEPS. No, not the actual steps, the flat, hollow part on top. It’s like a thunder sheet! I’ll drop him FROM BELLY-BUTTON HEIGHT TO KNEE HEIGHT. THAT’S WHAT I DO.”
Best: Thanks For Coming, Zack Ryder
Woo woo woo, I’m dying alone.
Best: Lana Has To Ask Putin If It’s All Right For Her To Join Team Authority
My favorite moment of the night was Stephanie McMahon approaching Lana about joining Team Authority, and her saying she’d have to run it by Vladimir Putin first. I don’t care how many hundreds of millions of dollars they have to spend or how many international etiquette rules they have to break, if they have Putin slide into the ring and blast John Cena in the face with one of those running, jumping Shane McMahon chair shots I will sign over my soul to WWE. They can have my first born. They can have all my born, I don’t give a shit.
One quick complaint, though: Team Authority vs. Team Cena got announced for Survivor Series way too early, so all the stories are being blown off or written into a corner so everyone can get thrown into it. There’s no real “Team Authority” happening. Team Authority should be Rollins, Orton, Kane, maybe Triple H, maybe Noble and Mercury. If you want to get brave, loosely associated guys like Cesaro or Lesnar. Instead, it’s going to be Rusev, Mark Henry and whoever else matches up with their monthly “rival” on Team Cena. It’s a Raw 10-man tag with randomly assigned partners that has nothing to do with the still-pretty-imaginary beef between Cena and the Evil GMs.
Granted, that’s justified by Vince showing up and going all Deus Ex Match-ina with the Survivor Series stipulations. Team Authority wants to win, so obviously they want the biggest and toughest and strongest people on their team. That’s fine. It would just be cooler if the teams wrestling at Survivor Series were actual teams, and not random confederations of active characters. I guess that’s a general complaint for most Survivor Series teams.
Worst: “No Comment On The Divas Match?”
Multiple choice: What is Brandon’s comment about The Divas Match?
a. This is the same thing they do every week, they just replaced Paige and Alicia Fox with the Bella Twins
b. Brie is the evil twin. “Being an assistant” doesn’t mean attacking people because your sister said to. That’s called “being an accomplice.”
c. Emma should probably give up and start selling insurance
d. all of the above
Worst: Remember When Xavier Woods Said His Team Wasn’t About Being Black, And Then They Gave Him A Gospel Choir And A James Brown Gimmick
Me either.
This can be saved in two ways:
1. Playing up the James Brown aspect of the character, and bringing back Ernest ‘The Cat’ Miller to do anything. Mentor him, feud with him, anything. Bonus points if Kofi Kingston and Big E get repackaged as Miss Jones and Lamont.
2. They play up the religious aspect of the character and change his entrance theme to ‘Somebody Call My Father.’
A dancing guy preaching and doing James Brown in front of a gospel choir. It’s like they put BLACK GUY STUFF into Homer Simpson’s makeup gun and shot Xavier Woods in the face.
Also:
The video should’ve ended with Woods turning to the choir with a smile and being shocked to find they’re all wearing Sting makeup.
Worst: AND THE REST
The tag team champions have to feud with someone, so they’ve picked a random team that exists (Los Matadores) and entered into a series of non-title losses and divided-up singles matches that end in distractions. It’s so tired at this point I can’t even rage about it. It’s like complaining about Raw having Popeye’s commercials.
Just wanted to devote a little section to typing this sentence: Stardust lost the match when he was distracted by Diego trying to mess with Goldust and getting shoved into the steps, El Torito dropkicking Goldust into The Miz and Damien Mizdow and everyone getting into an argument. There are seven people involved in the finish of this match and it’s still “you got distracted, I hit you with one move, NOW YOU’RE DEAD.” They could save money in the budget by giving Michael Cole a posterboard with DISTRACTION written on it and having him blow a whistle and hold it over his head when it’s time to do another bullshit finish.
Best: Holy Crap, Did This Main Event Actually Have A FINISH? And It Wasn’t An Attitude Adjustment?
Speaking of bullshit finishes … wait, what?
The main event of the show was Randy Orton vs. Seth Rollins, and the match was a lot of fun. Everything was going great until … hold on, I don’t even know how to type about this. Seth Rollins countered an RKO into a backslide for a clean pin on Orton and actually won the match. It feels like I’m typing in a foreign language.
I think Rollins is probably the smartest guy in the company right now. He’s doing this exactly right. He anchored the pace of a lot of the critically acclaimed Shield six-man tags, but when the group broke up he was the one the fewest people picked to be the “breakout star.” Roman Reigns is the can’t-miss future of the company, but he struggles in singles matches and gets hurt at the worst time. Dean Ambrose gets a sudden surge of popularity because he’s such a singular thing, but he’s not “the future of the company” so he gets shuffled into the Sheamus spot of being the second fiddle who has good matches, but is also asked to act like a moron. Seth Rollins busts his ass every single night and carries that “architect” glue from his six-mans into his singles contests, and everybody important sees it. It doesn’t hurt that he’s positioned directly beside the important people. They work with him every week. He tears the roof off every time he goes out and does whatever dumb thing they say. Fall off the cage? Done. Get sprayed in the face with green slime? Sure! Dive off the balcony? I’LL DO IT TWICE.
I think Seth Rollins is winning. I mean, besides this.
Best: Randy Orton Has Been Compromised To A Temporary End
Sure, Raw ended the way it did because Orton needs a few weeks off to go film The Marine 5: Not Allowed To Play A Marine, but it was CHANGE. It was new territory. Contextually, at least.
Orton loses to Rollins, and everyone tries to gently break it to him that that’s it, and they have to be friends now. Orton calmly shakes hands with Joey Mercury, Jamie Noble and Kane, then pulls the ol’ “I’m gonna shake your hand but NOT LET GO because HERE COME THE WRESTLING MOVES” gag on Rollins. That leads to him fighting the entire Authority by himself (including Triple H, who sells a forearm shot to the face like he sold the Brie Bella slap … with gusto) and getting Curb Stomped on the ring steps. They’re really into the ring steps this week for some reason.
The ending to Raw said so much we needed to hurry up and say. Orton is a great physical asset to The Authority, but his mental instability is a detriment. He’s not the “perfect” fighter John Cena is, which causes constant disappointment to a team with unrealistic expectations. He’s being usurped by Rollins, who has all of Orton’s back-stabbiness without the Intermittent Explosive Disorder. Triple H understands the dude and has a long history with him and values things like BLOOD BROTHER LOYALTY (or whatever) above all, so he tries to mentor/motivate/control him. Talk him down. This is a guy who once DDT’d Triple H’s wife and made out with her unconscious body, and Triple H is still out here trying to work him through his problems. BABYFACE~. But yeah, Orton punches him in the face and H realizes he’s got no choice. He’s got to put the sick dog out of its misery, and he gets Orton’s replacement to do it for him. It’s warm and cold-hearted at the same time.
So now you’re left with a conflicted Authoritarian who “plays the game” (so to speak) and knows he has to make the right decisions to protect his ass. You’ve got this guy’s wife, who is basically the daughter of the Devil and predisposed for self-serving cruelty. The profession he’s chosen and family he’s married into makes him more evil than he thinks he is. It’s why he’s always so dismissive of criticism. You’ve got a cabinet full of corporate lackeys. You’ve got a new young star who came up as a mercenary and slit the throat of the only two people he could trust. and now you’ve got a naturally gifted but mentally flawed superstar given a hospital vacation and a concise, focused reason for revenge.
If only we could make the good guys as compelling as the bad ones.
Best: The Firemaster
Down in front.
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
Downbound
“Power that was earned, not power handed to them” – Vincent Kennedy McMahon, Jr.
LBCS
Bray Wyatt becoming the ultimate magical heel by summoning commercials
Redshirt the Disgruntled Bengals Fan
Triple H: “You’re already Intercontinental Champion. Do you want to see how low the jobber hole goes?”
Harry Longabaugh
HHH: If Team Cena wins, the Authority disbands and the WWE becomes a deregulated company where the individuals hold all the power.
KANE: …Sounds good to me!
Spitty
Kane’s just wondering why that keep calling Billy Gunn ‘Dolph’
PhilBallins
Noble: “Watch out! He’s gone AWOL!”
HHH: “I should’ve seen this coming.”
Dolph Ziggler World Champion
Xavier Woods’ new gimmick just put African -Americans back 20 minutes in WWE.
Terrence Kiels Sizzurp
How many NYC blocks would Rowan silently follow Renee for?
Mr Grift
Seth Rollins and Dolph Ziggler seem like they may have been created in the same hair bleach and rubber band factory explosion.
Cami
This match is all selling and no buying, just like WWE stock.
Thanks, everybody. See you next week.
One final note:
Yes, I know a really cool thing happened after Raw went on the air. WWE Network is trying to increase subscriptions by having Network-exclusive matches, and they ran a Rusev vs. Sheamus match with a U.S. title change immediately following the show. As much as I like that, I am not interested in making my already three hour, 15-minute Raw experience into 3:45. Not even for Lana.
